Holidays not a jolly time for everyone: What to do if you're grieving

Amy Neff Roth

Monday

Nov 26, 2007 at 12:01 AMNov 26, 2007 at 3:39 AM

There are ways to help ease feelings of great loss during the holidays.

This Christmas, Karen Wrate of New Hartford, N.Y., will celebrate with her son Sean by hanging his stocking and some ornaments he made as a child on her tree.
And she’ll decorate a tree and a wreath placed on his grave.
Sean Reilly died of a rare muscle cancer, called rhabdomyosarcoma, in the wee hours of the morning after Thanksgiving 2005.
He was 18.
Facing the holidays without her “tough-on-the-outside, heart-of-gold-on-the-inside” son is particularly hard for Wrate because of the timing of Sean’s death.
“I hate Thanksgiving,” she said.
On Thanksgiving 2005, Wrate knew that everyone else was celebrating as she watched her son suffer that day, she said.
Despite her pain, Wrate has tried hard to carry on certain holiday traditions for the sake of her 11-year-old twins and 23-year-old daughter while creating traditions to keep Sean’s memory close.
“But I know I’m going to feel depressed when I first wake up (on a holiday morning),” Wrate said.
The bonds we share with people never die, said bereavement counselor Linda Clark of Hospice and Palliative Care Inc. in New Hartford.
“Families are families, including the people who died,” she said. “They don’t get smaller … The relationship is still part of your life.”
It’s a question of balance between holding on to your memories and traditions and moving on, she said. Maintaining this balance can be especially difficult during the holidays, Clark said.
And that stress is compounded by the festive atmosphere.
“It’s supposed to be a happy season, and the expectation is that everybody is jolly,” Clark said. But people who are grieving aren’t feeling jolly, she said.
So how do you get through the holidays when your thoughts are on someone who’s no longer with you?
“For everybody, it helps to have a plan when you’re grieving,” she said.
The anticipation is usually worse than the actual holiday, so it helps to know ahead of time exactly what you’re going to do, when you’re going to do it and who will be there, Clark said.
Clark strongly suggests that those who will be alone for the holiday find something to do, possibly attending a church gathering or helping in a soup kitchen. Giving of yourself can help give the day meaning, she said.
As for holiday traditions, Clark suggested sitting down ahead of time, alone or with the family, with a checklist and deciding which traditions to keep, which to scrap and which to modify. Everyone grieves differently and will come up with a different plan, she said.
The important thing, Clark said, is to give yourself permission to change things you cannot face and to keep cherished traditions even though your loved one will no longer be there.
Wrate, for example, decided to throw out the family Christmas tree last year because Sean always had decorated it, and no one else could do it “right,”she said. Now the family has a new tree and some new ornaments in memory of Sean.
To make Sean a part of the holidays, the family now holds a candle-lighting ceremony in his honor on Thanksgiving and visits his grave to decorate the artificial tree and wreath. The next day, there’s a Mass in Sean’s memory.
On Christmas Eve last year, Wrate and the twins launched balloons with messages to Sean before the festivities began and on Christmas, the family watches a video of Sean unwrapping packages when he was 14.
And last year Wrate bought herself a Christmas present: she paid someone to make a quilt, including photos of Sean, out of his old T-shirts and jeans.
“That was the only thing I wanted for Christmas,” she said.
Clark also suggested doing things for the holiday in memory of the one who died, such as carrying on a tradition started by the one who died, giving money to a charity in the person’s memory or putting a memorial notice in the newspaper.
Another important part of grieving, Clark said, is for everyone – the bereaved, family, friends – to remember that it’s OK to talk about the deceased, preferably by name. She suggested keeping a memory book in which visitors can share memories.
“Every time you can bring a story about the person to the family, that’s a gift,” Clark said.
Yet people often try to “tiptoe” around Sean’s death to avoid upsetting her, Wrate said. But she’s not afraid to talk about Sean or to cry during the conversation, she said. That’s what helps her heal.
Wrate said she loves hearing people say Sean’s name and hearing stories about him.
“That’s the best gift you can give a bereaved parent,” she said.
Utica Observer-Dispatch

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